The Saint Monica’s Home of the Augustinian Recollects in Fortaleza (Ceará, Brazil) is a project that fights against exploitation, abuse, abandonment, school drop-out or any type of violence against underage girls and adolescents from neighborhoods, families and more vulnerable.
We do not know how many there are. But they are they every day, on the beach, near the discos, or in the sordid motels where you can get a room with no questions asked. The eight Brazilian currency reals (1,5$USA) paid on entrance are a passport for two hours, where there are no laws, no rights, no smiles and no apprenticeship. There is confirmed anonymity and social immunity for those who pay, and the embarrassment and internal and external destruction of a young body and soul still in growth.
As in the rest of the world, in Brazil there are no precise facts on the sexual exploitation of minors. It is a scar which extends for the ease and cheapness of the displaced, and the global injustice which permits that for a few Euros or dollars, that would be a fortune in three fourths of the world, the acquisition of very specific information with a few clicks of a mouse; and the permission or promotion of such a practice as a source of revenues for families.
It is a very complex problem, with a thousand facets and agents which take part. Up until our unknown adult pays the eight Brazilian currency reals in the motel many people have participated in an active way in the clandestine illegality of such an act. In a passive or permissive way many families are without hope. In an inclusive way the authorities, society, and the ambient, of the adult like that of the girl or boy, accedes to what happens.
The problem is present in all of Brazil, although some zones are better known (areas of tourism, and big urban centers with large populations or frontier zones.) In some places 60% of the women who prostitute themselves are less than 19 years old. The accusations for the prostitution of minors’ doesn´t represent even 9% of real cases. The rest stay in silence, in the nightmares of every night, in social stigma. In the whole country there are 241 acknowledged routes of trafficking, for children and adolescents of both sexes, for ends exclusively sexual.
It is not a problem specifically of motels: this is only the last step. Beforehand, the nets capture young girls and clients in commercial centers, hotels, spas, rented apartments, restaurants, beach huts, bars, cafeterias, samba schools, massage parlours, agencies for the domestic employed and au pairs, modelling agencies, dance halls, dating agencies, tourist agencies, newspaper adverts, taxis… All that is necessary is to be poor, to not have a quality education, to know inconvenient “friends” and to have a body. Then without knowing the circumstances you accompany an adult who pays the small amount of eight Brazilian currency reals. He takes your hand, leads you inside into a world with no way out; to get out is not easy without help.
NEXT PAGE: 2. The origin of Saint Monica Home’s
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